The Founder. A short-lived religious community, founded in Emden, East
Friesland, about 1540 by Hendrik Niclaes, or Niclas, and exercising a certain
amount of influence in the religious confusion of the later English Revolution,
as well as in the Philadelphian Society of Jane Lead (q.v.). Born of Roman
Catholic parentage on Jan. 9 or 10, 1502 or 1501, possibly at Münster,
Niclaes spent the first twenty-nine years of his life in his native city as a
merchant. He was originally a devoted follower of the ancient faith, and even
in his career as the leader of a sect he felt still formally connected with
Roman Catholicism. However, he entered into spiritual communion with
many who were inclined toward the Reformation, and in 1528 he was
imprisoned for a short time, but was released for lack of evidence. Some
time before 1531 he settled in Amsterdam, remaining there more than nine
years. The only details known concerning this residence are that within a
year he was again imprisoned, and that after his speedy release he lived in
seclusion, devoting himself to a life of Pietism. It was not until his
thirty-ninth year that Niclaes became a figure of importance, and claimed
that revelations had assured him that God had poured upon him the "spirit of
the true love of Jesus Christ," and had chosen him from his youth to be the
prophet to prepare the way for the approaching end of time. In this period
he began to commit his revelations to writing, and for twenty years (1540 -
60), Emden was the center both of his mercantile activity and his religious
propaganda, while he journeyed throughout Holland and Flanders, and also
visited Paris and London. To this period belong the majority of his writings,
of which the most important were Den Spegel der Gherechticheit, dorch den
Geist der Lieffden unde den vergodeden Mensch H. N. uth de hemmelische
Warheit betüget, and Evangelium offte eine frölicke Bodeschop des Rycke
godes unde Christi (Eng. transl., An Introduction to the Understanding of the
Glasse of Righteousness, by C. Vittell, 1575 [?]). Most of these works were
printed secretly, but, as is now certain, partly by the press of the famous
Antwerp printer Plantin, who had become a convert to Niclaes' views about
1550, despite the fact that later he was the "prototypographus" of the king
of Spain and printer to the Holy See. Niclaes himself continued to be
ostensibly a strict Roman Catholic, his works being disseminated by his
closest disciples, while he himself established his Familia caritatis at Emden.

Doctrines of the Familists. This was essentially a community of mystic indifferentism, only loosely
connected with historic Christianity. While the teachings of the Bible and the
Church were not denied, they were practically ignored, being regarded either
as a mere preparation for the age of love, or being reduced to allegories.
The basis of the system is a mystic pantheism, which explains how Niclaes
could believe that God and Christ had become incarnate in himself, although
others also might thus partake of God. On the other hand, the
self-consciousness of the founder, who did not hesitate to term himself an
incarnation of God or Christ, often defeated the logical consequences of
pantheism; and the organization of the sect, with its twenty-four elders,
archbishops, four classes of priests, and "supreme bishop," was entirely
monarchical. A centralized administration was necessitated, moreover, by
the complicated system of priests professing poverty, a community giving
tithes, and an involved law of inheritance. There is no reason to suppose,
however, that Niclaes was a conscious hypocrite, although his mysticism of
love had an antinomian tendency, and both the organization of the sect and
many practises of the community were not free from peril. The propaganda
of Niclaes did not escape the notice of the authorities of Emden. Niclaes
himself escaped in 1560, before proceedings could be taken against him, and
lived the life of a refugee for several years, residing successively at Kampen,
Utrecht, probably again in England, and, after 1570 in Cologne. He seems to
have died in 1580, the year in which appeared his Terra Pacis, Wäre
Getügenisse van idt geistelick Landschop des Fredes (Eng. transl., Terra
Pacis. A True Testification of the Spirituall Lande of Promyse, 1575 [?]). His
success on the Continent had been comparatively slight. At the time of his
death he had disciples in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Dort, Kampen, Rotterdam,
Emden, Cologne, and Paris, but in all these places the community seems to
have survived only a short time, the last certain mention of them dating
from 1604.

The Familists in England. In England the influence of the Familists was
deeper and more lasting. The entering wedge seems to have been a Dutch
congregation in London, with whom Niclaes came in contact, especially as
this community included adherents of David Joris (q.v.) and similar fanatics.
Christopher Vitel, a native of Delft, the city of Joris, was, moreover, long the
head of the English Familists, but the movement soon spread to genuinely
English soil, and the most of the writings of Niclaes were translated into
English. In 1574 the English government proceeded against the Familists,
whereupon they addressed to Parliament An Apology for the Service of Love
and the People that Own it, and in the following year issued A Brief
Rehearsal of the Belief of the Goodwilling in England, which are named the
Family of Love. They were answered by John Rogers and John Knewstub,
and on Oct. 3, 1580, Elizabeth issued a proclamation against them which
condemned their books and directed that the sectaries themselves be
imprisoned. A week later a formula of abjuration was promulgated, and laws
against the Familists soon followed. The sect did not disappear, however,
and James I. was addressed by them in petitions soon after his accession,
but in vain. The new monarch was extremely antagonistic to them, and had
declared as early as the preface to his Basilicon doron in 1599, that they
were responsible for the rise of Puritanism. After the fall of the Stuarts, they
were opposed by John Etherington, but in the Republican period many of the
works of Niclaes were reprinted, while it has been suggested that Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress owes its inspiration to Familist writings. They were also
closely connected with the Ranters of the Commonwealth. After the
Restoration the Familists vanished, and by the beginning of the eighteenth
century but one aged member of the sect was known to be alive.

The Successor of Niclaes. Niclaes' faithless disciple Hendrik Jansen of
Barreveldt, writing under the pseudonym of Hiel, long survived his teacher.
Of his life little is known, although in his later years he himself says that he
led the life of a wanderer. He was closely associated with Plantin and his
family, who printed the greater part of his writings, his chief work being Het
Boeck der Ghetuygenissen van den verborgen Ackerschat, published by
Plantin at Antwerp in Flemish and French about 1580. Hiel discarded the
hierarchic and ceremonial traditions of his master, and declared all external
worship a matter of indifference, thus rendering it possible for the famous
Antwerp printer to remain formally in the Roman Catholic Church, and to
belong to the Spanish Catholic party despite his sympathy with the Familists.